ISS World in Prague, June 2-4 2026

Das kanadische Citizen Lab forscht zu digitaler Spionage und Massenüberwachung www.jetzt.at/artikel/sswy...

Here's our 2023 report on how "data about American defense personnel and political leaders flows to foreign states and non-state actors": www.iccl.ie/digital-data...

Incredible quote from Wyden, that it is time to "start treating the adtech industry as a national security threat."

The disastrous Bill C-22 has a lot of huge problems. Among them: it will lay the legal groundwork for giving the 🇺🇸 US warrantless access to Canadian 🇨🇦 data My @citizenlab.ca colleague @kate-ro.bsky.social with the analysis in @thewalrus.ca thewalrus.ca/trump-wants-...

Move Fast and PsyOp Things Leaked Documents Reveal Russian ‘Cognitive Strikes’ Against the West — Including Islamophobic ‘Pig Head’ Attacks in Paris www.occrp.org/en/investiga... via @occrp.org

I admire diplomats i know it's a tough job. You have to sometimes couch your words carefully. I just know I'm not cut out for that. For example, I'd tell this guy to fuck right off. www.cbc.ca/news/politic...

Not entirely clear with whom ICE 🇺🇸 currently has an active spyware contract, but it's with some entity They say it's not Paragon, the fmr Israeli 🇮🇱 now US 🇺🇸 firm that we uncovered being abused in Italy to target civil society, and which was previously contracted by ICE www.kuow.org/stories/dhs-...

Canada 🇨🇦 proposed new Lawful Access Act #C22 is a total nightmare The Act would allow the govt to compel any electronic service provider (your ISP, telco, coffee shop, library, VPN provider, messenger app etc) to provide backdoor access to targets' accounts & much more Absolutely crazy

Greece 🇬🇷 has witnessed a flurry of corruption and espionage against journalists, but the journalists are relentless and principled and the truth will eventually come out through the courts and through public interest investigations. www.dnews.gr/eidhseis/new...

Citizen Lab’s @rondeibert.bsky.social speaking in Athens yesterday about the 🇬🇷Greek wiretapping scandal: “Accountability takes time, but in the end, everything will be revealed.” www.dnews.gr/eidhseis/pol...

"The real surprise came after clicking on 记者档案查询, which translates best as ‘Inquiry for Journalist files’. This presents a complete set of all the foreign journalists based in Beijing around 2021, including passport numbers, ID photos, cellphone numbers, dates of birth etc."

Demo of a Chinese 🇨🇳 video surveillance system that purports to track all foreign visitors, including journalists, integrating video feeds with other data (e.g., pictures from ski passes) to conduct mass surveillance and social network analysis 👇 The new normal... open.substack.com/pub/netaskar...

In the "open secret" news category, Canada's 🇨🇦 Ontario Provincial Police have been using spyware, but not disclosing it to the public, and even burying legal cases to keep it secret! www.thestar.com/news/ontario...

ICE use of Palantir systems now means agency officials effectively have a list of 20 million people readily accessible on their iPhones, increasing the speed at which ICE can find houses to raid and people to arrest. www.404media.co/ice-agents-h...

Scoop from me and Gabriel Stargardter in Paris: French authorities are investigating whether BlackCore - alleged to be an Israeli disinfo firm - interfered in the March municipal elections in Marseille, Toulouse, and Roubaix. www.reuters.com/business/med...

This must be the weirdest disinformation network and actor I have seen in a long time. Glad I could comment on @whljustin.bsky.social ‘s story about it. Ever see pro-China disinfo sites run by a supposed priest/diplomat/journalist who once posed as a NZ spy and triggered a fake scandal? Read on.

The former 🇵🇱 Polish justice minister, wanted for misuse of public funds & abusing Pegasus spyware (as we @citizenlab.ca discovered, against the device of now PM Tusk's lawyer and others), has fled Hungary after the election to the 🇺🇸 US, at the invitation of Trump www.politico.eu/article/ex-p...

Wow @mozilla.org "identified and fixed an unprecedented number of latent security bugs in Firefox with the help of Claude Mythos Preview and other AI models" The graph is jaw dropping h/t @adamsenft.bsky.social hacks.mozilla.org/2026/05/behi...

In January, a phishing message arrived on my Signal account, supposedly from "Signal Support." I was able to turned the tables on the attackers and get a unique view of the wide-scale campaign by the attacker's targeting journalists and politicians I was target #13,730 in their database.

Assaults on press freedom continue to spread, the latest: El Salvador 🇸🇻 attacks on journalist organization El Faro...

"Haotian AI marks the next stage in deepfake scams and fraud, one that the public and tech companies may not be ready for, where criminals are able to change their appearance in real time to trick people..." www.404media.co/hello-boss-i...

🧵Remember PAPERWALL, the sprawling disinfo network we @citizenlab.ca exposed in 2024 as run by a Chinese firm, Haimai? 2 full years later, it's still very active and expanding. In its quest to cover the whole globe, it is now focusing also on Australia, New Zealand, and India. Readers? Still zero.

Wow this is so amazing @yaelwrites.com and colleagues -- congratulations!!!

🇺🇸 DHS Demanded Google Surrender Data on 🇨🇦 Canadian’s Activity, Location Over Anti-ICE Posts As i said in my testimony to a Canadian parliamentary committee, we have to put the USA alongside China, Russia, Iran, India, as a perpetrator of transnational repression www.wired.com/story/dhs-de...

Yes I did (and I hope all of you consider it too). This is a step backwards. Security for the few; insecurity for the rest of us.

As many are aware by now, @accessnow.org 's annual @rightscon.org was cancelled because of pressure on the host govt Zambia 🇿🇲 by China 🇨🇳 www.rightscon.org/rc26-stateme... In their statement, @accessnow.org rightly flags this is as an example of transnational repression

Sending positive vibes to everyone @accessnow.org and all of the prospective attendees, many of whom already bought hotels, airline tickets, etc, for Zambia's shameful decision to cancel #rightscon at the last minute

According to WIRED Italy, Italian prosecutors sent a formal request for information to Paragon, via the Israeli government, but a year after the investigations were opened, the company has yet to respond. www.wired.it/article/para...

China-linked hackers led phishing campaigns targeting journalists and activists, researchers say therecord.media/china-linked... from @suzannesmalley.bsky.social on our latest @citizenlab.ca / @icij.org investigation 👇

NEW @citizenlab.ca report uncovers two separate China-based cyber espionage campaigns targeting journalists, human rights defenders, exiled ethnic and religious groups and many others. citizenlab.ca/research/how...

Thanks for having me on, @npr.org All Things Considered, I enjoyed talking to host Rob Schmitz about our recent @citizenlab.ca report on Webloc, and advertising intelligence in general www.npr.org/2026/04/26/n...

Our research uncovers extensive abuses of power by security agencies, including in numerous constitutional democracies Oversight / independent review is critical to civil liberties and other human rights Security agencies routinely deflect, evade, & obstruct those bodies, including here in 🇨🇦

A few years ago it seemed like govts were beginning to rein in the abusive mercenary spyware market and an international regime was forming Now, that regime is fraying and proliferation is picking up steam again By @lorenzofb.bsky.social's count, at least 9 spyware vendors in Italy 🇮🇹 alone 👇

💥"Yesterday you could feel a huge relief among leaders. Because it was for the first time in years that there were no Russians in the room, if you know what I'm talking about. But..." And then Robert Fico walks in while Donald Tusk winks at the reporters. Pure perfection.

This wild document is the basis for the State Department's decision to cancel the visas and green cards of tech researchers who study the social media platforms and of tech regulators who enforce privacy and transparency laws. Disclosed to us last night in @thecoalition.bsky.social v. Rubio.

An oversight body is "too antagonistic"? CSE staff reported getting "ulcers"? C'mon. Seriously? Here's the result of my informal survey as a counter-point: Ottawa academics are too cozy with security agencies because of proximity and former employment ties

NEW @citizenlab.ca report We uncover two sophisticated telecom surveillance campaigns. The findings expose how surveillance vendors exploit the global telecom ecosystem to conduct covert location tracking operations that can persist undetected for years. citizenlab.ca/research/unc...

The creeps who make up Trump's paramilitary force (aka 🇺🇸 ICE) will soon be outfitted with the same glasses worn by all the other creeps who wear them, except these creepy glasses will be fused with mass surveillance data by @kenklippenstein.bsky.social open.substack.com/pub/kenklipp...

ALERT: Canada 🇨🇦 has a new lawful access bill on the dock that will impose * mandatory wired-in surveillance infrastructure on all service providers (i.e., backdoors) * that is undertaken through secret orders * and will include mandatory metadata retention 😬 www.justice.gc.ca/eng/csj-sjc/...

More 🇺🇸 ICE contracts for mass surveillance systems surfacing 👇

Hundreds of Fake Pro-Trump Avatars Emerge on Social Media www.nytimes.com/2026/04/17/b...

A leaked document obtained by @citizenlab.ca says Webloc sells data/identifiers including geolocation from "up to 500 million mobile devices across the globe” to U.S. and foreign security agencies (including ICE) and military. H/t @rondeibert.bsky.social www.lawfaremedia.org/article/it-i...

Thanks @tom.risky.biz @lawfaremedia.org for highlighting the @citizenlab.ca's latest report on Webloc's mass data surveillance system used by 🇺🇸 US agencies and what to do about it "It Is Time to Ban the Sale of Precise Geolocation" www.lawfaremedia.org/article/it-i...

The advertising ecosystem upon which surveillance vendors like Penlink draw their data is a toxic, poorly regulated and exploitative swamp My @citizenlab.ca colleague @wchr.bsky.social with some follow-on observations about this swamp related to our "Uncovering Webloc" report published last week 👇

Are the surveillance services provided by Penlink as outlined in our new @citizenlab.ca report legal in Europe? @wchr.bsky.social explains why that's unlikely 👇

Great news for Hungary and a big defeat for far right bullies

I was going to write some thoughts about Flock in #TO, but thankfully @cyn-k.bsky.social did & much better than I could, which you can find below in this 🧵

Report by @netzpolitik.org on @vsquare.bsky.social / @citizenlab.ca investigation into Hungary's use of Cobwebs' ADINT platform for mass surveillance netzpolitik.org/2026/vor-sch...

BREAKING: You checked the weather this morning. And you just told a surveillance company where you sleep. Meet #Webloc, used by ICE, cops & foreign govs to track 500m+ phones. No warrant required. Our @citizenlab.ca investigation + how to protect yourself 🧵/1 citizenlab.ca/research/ana...